Pretend you are Ray Shero and its the 1st round of the 2013 NHL draft.

Malkin looks as if he will signed for eight years to a reasonable cap hit.Letang negotiations are not going as well. He wants to break the bank and although he has another whole year on his contract you realize it's just not going to get done. You also realize when one door closes another opens up. (see Jordan Staal)

Out of all the other Gm's in the league who do you call and what is your asking price (what do you expect) for Kristopher Letang?

{DISCLAIMER} This is just conversational question and by no means represents my hopes or dreams when it comes to 58 and his fate with Pittsburgh Penguins. In other words: Letang groupies, please retract your claws.

Last edited by Stevo on Wed Mar 27, 2013 9:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Chara netted Yashin when he was 24, and the Islanders had to throw in the 2nd overall pick with him. Letang will be older: 26 at the draft. So my guess is that we will have to give up 2 firsts due to Letang's age and the fact we are so low in the first round along with Letang to get Sergei Kostitsyn. And we should consider ourselves lucky for it.

I'd say that's alot for a guy that has trouble on the power play. I don't hate on a lot of players and usually keep my mouth shut but if I was a gm I wouldn't want to give up this much for a guy who struggles on the pp. Now it could be a coaching thing but Letang has been under Bylsma for the past 4 years and Granato the past 3? I know the power play isn't everything but you would need your best d man to be complete as possible.

Or you look at it and say "Wow, I can get the highest scoring dman (2nd highest if Karlsson isn't injured) who scores primarily at ES... imagine what he could do for us if we get him working on the PP!"

Yes, yes it is. But I'm just not sure you could get much more than that. You got a guy that you still have to throw $50 million at or whatever, you have the "are you sure he's not getting scoring help at even strength by assisting on goals to the two best players in the league?" thing...a lot of teams have at least a couple PMDs in their system that they believe in enough to go, "eh...I'll take my chances on our own guy, the one we're developing..." and I think there would be enough of that feeling out there to drive down the price a little.

Don't get me wrong, if RS sends out a mass text to 29 GMs that Letang is available, his phone literally bursts into flames because of the amount of calls he'll get at the same time...but I'm not sure what you hope to get, but when you're talking about trading away a young Norris candidate, I think what you get will be underwhelming relative to the original piece...

I would probably think the Pens could get something similar to what they got for Staal. - Top 10 pick- Established dman- Decent prospect

That being said, I would hate to see Tanger go. But I have no idea how Ray is going to squeeze all these guys in. I once thought that a compliance buyout on Martin would do the trick, but that is not going to happen now.

....as an organization operating in the salary cap era do you think mgm't looks at players having a particular shelf life? Regardless of what contract they've offered said player? For instance, we offer Malkin the 7 or 8 yr deal at a cap hit of, and let's be generous 9 or close to 9.5 per year, and it includes an NMC/NTC, do you tell him you want the NMC/NTC you take less, or do you just sign him and get his list of teams when you think it's time to move him, maybe you think the time is right after 5 years because you're thinking you're still going to get maximum value? I hate the NMC/NTC issue it ties your hands. I'm not in the I want him (whoever he is) here his entire career, for me it's the name on the front of the jersey issue. Economic reality makes me believe it's going to be almost impossible for guys to play for one team their entire career. I'm not saying we trade Malkin, since his contract is up it seemed easiest to use him as an example